


featherlight

by chamelenyoung



Series: mage!au (figure disruption) [1]
Category: GOT7, JJ Project
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Gen, Mage!AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-16
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:26:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24692248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chamelenyoung/pseuds/chamelenyoung
Summary: The roster: Jaebeom the hybrid, Jinyoung the Arcanist, Youngjae the Empath, Yugyeom the Dreamcaster, Bambam the smith mage, Jackson the vampire, and Mark the - well, no one knows what exactly he is, really.The mission: Go in, recover illegal instrument of magic, kill as many monsters as possible, get out - preferably in no more (or less) than seven pieces.
Series: mage!au (figure disruption) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1785661
Comments: 3
Kudos: 22





	1. Chapter 1

Yugyeom startles awake in a sun-drenched room, with cream colored sofas he knows well. His mother cleans and chatters on about the virtues of steam mopping and other newfangled housekeeping tools.

He almost asks if Bambam will really be staying over after dinner, if he should remind him to pack a few things, but for some reason Yugyeom senses he might only receive incredulity.

 _There_ , he thinks, he wills himself properly awake. An odd smell descends from above to assault his senses, a heady waft of iron and expensive cologne, metal glittering above his nose. A knife? No, a necklace, in the shape of the Chinese character for -

“Hyung, what the hell, get off!” and Jackson grins. He's so used to Yugyeom’s magic by the point, he can sniff out an accidental Dreamwalking spell just by the way Yugyeom's eyelashes quiver.

“Saving you from yourself, man,” Jackson's still straddling Yugyeom’s mattress. ”You started sleep talking.”

Ah. That was a recent and unfortunate complication.

“About fried rice. Just think, what if one of us had eaten you? What if we’d eaten _each other_?”

As a rule, Yugyeom does not permit his imagination to wield the sort of brainpower needed to entertain such speculations. He runs a hand through sleep-tossed hair and groans. “What time is it, anyway?”

Jackson throws open Yugyeom’s door to the rest of barracks with a bang. “Noon, darling. Rise and shine, our launch slot’s in fifteen.”

From the sheer amount of noise in the hall, it seems the rest of the Seventh Order has been up for hours.

He can hear Bambam complaining about the color the Grand Company's picked for the new mage's robe set, an admittedly garish mustard. “Why yellow? Even green would've been better.” (Jinyoung reminds him dryly that no one's going to be able to tell what color it really is after monster goo gets sprayed out it.)

Yugyeom yawns and sidles up to what serves as their dining table and Jinyoung barely throws him a glance. “You’re lucky you don’t have a battle kit to prepare,” he tuts, eyes never leaving the pages of a spell book he's turning. “Breakfast’s in the fridge. Bambam made it - it’s probably nontoxic.”

“Chocolate shake?” Yugyeom asks hopefully.

“I got you bro!” A muffled voice calls a few doors down.

Yugyeom sighs in appreciation. Bambam’s the best.

Bam's probably only told Jaebeom the unabridged version if the story, but he claims he messed around in a metalworker mage’s shop a lot as a kid. One night, someone tried to pilfer their primordial fire by scrambling the security and fireproof spells, and ended up imploding the place. Bambam got out alive with nothing more than with a vein of molten gold around his left wrist.

Yugyeom thinks that no local magic enforcement with any functioning members would let a kid like that walk without heavy oversight, but Bambam claims he somehow bribed his way up to the Northern islands by travelling with the merchant caravans, in search of a simple life as a battle mage.

Bambam’s file officially lists him as a smith mage, but Yugyeom's never believed that’s strictly accurate. ("Have _you_ met a smith mage who can melt knives on his wrist? It's _weird_ ," Yugyeom used to grumble to Jinyoung, who would shush him.)

Needless to say, the reason the company ends up recruiting him out of the war magic guilds probably has something to do with that wrist. Legend has it, Bambam caught a roommate trying to cut it out of his arm while he was asleep, and the aftermath was so gruesome, it's restricted access information.

Anyway, Yugyeom knows for a fact that Bambam sleeps with more than those two enchanted daggers visible at his belt. He’s also unfairly good at everything - unranged and ranged weaponry alike. He says he picked up the know-how on his journey up north, but who really knew when it came to him.

He and Bambam share a room because Yugyeom can’t (and probably shouldn’t) sleep alone.

Jaebeom and Jinyoung were a package. Rumor has it, they were the newest ace team of one of the black mage guilds, until an accident tainted them enough they were considered for memory and magic wiping. A sympathetic mentor suggested donating them to the Seventh Order instead.

“How the hell did Jaebeom-hyung grow a tail, then?” Bambam would whisper well, well, out of earshot.

(The juicer gossip says Jinyoung worked in the _Archive_ , made it to _Scholar_ before he discovered magic he shouldn’t have, did things he shouldn’t have (no homo in those book stacks, you know) - and they kicked him and his hybrid Familiar out, maybe throwing in a curse or two for good measure. And, because the pair had already known too much, seen too much, they got shoved in a Grand Order in the Company's periphery with stricter confinement, riskier missions, and less people to give a damn about whether you exist or not in general.)

Jinyoung’s probably the most normal one out of them, save for the intricate burn patterns on his palms they’ve spotted, and know not to ask him about. Except for Jackson. Jackson lives for the dorky laugh that sometimes escapes from Jinyoung - they hear it more nowadays - and will probably wheedle it out of him someday. (Screw the Company, Yugyeom thinks, the Seventh Order has been a good influence on Jinyoung.)

Jaebeom, their beloved leader, is - what is he exactly? An undead cat hybrid, former War Class officer, who is way too good with close-range combat for anyone to feel comfortable about it. (Those bookstacks sure needed protecting, huh?) His catlike features might have been cute if he weren't so intimidatingly built. (Youngjae catches him sunbathing on the porch occasionally, though.) His ears twitch in the cold, which Jinyoung finds exceptionally adorable, but nevermind that.

Jaebeom is immune to bio attacks as a result of his lack of mortal immune system, and Mark swears he’s never, ever seen him take a hit. (“Maybe I’m just that good,” Jaebeom says with a raised brow.)

He reads way too much (maybe that’s where the Archive rumors started), and yields to Jinyoung, and only Jinyoung (maybe because he spent half a year handfeeding him back from the dead -er - if you could call it that).

Then there’s Mark, whose records cite a distant veela lineage, but anyone who's seen him angry would argue a little more than that (Bambam calls it _Morph Mork_ ). But then again, male veelas aren't supposed to exist so there's that.

He's just beautiful and there's nothing more to say.

(Okay, fine - he's the eldest, occasionally really effective at asserting his opinion, which may or may not have to do with his veela powers, pretty damn decent at ranged combat, maybe even better than Jaebeom. And when his temper erupts - oh, the fire. He made it to War Class level three before the Order fished him out of the war magic guilds – same year as Bambam.)

Jackson, a later addition, seems utterly human (and is certainly annoying enough to be one), until you touch his arm and it's dead (pun intended) cold.

He has pictures of his parents framed in his room, and although he swears they’re both your regular, vampires-next-door, no one has ever seen him feed the regular vampire way. Notably, before Jackson started going to Youngjae's therapy sessions, the energy in the room dropped proportionally to Jackson’s satiation. Jackson _loves_ company parties. You can make your own deductions.

His weapons of choice - swords - are just as loud as his music choices, customization courtesy of Bambam. He’s fast, and aggressive, and has in most cases unending stamina in battle. He's their fourth and final War Class member (“And thank heavens,” Youngjae tended to say, “He’s bad enough as a war class – could you imagine him with a _spellbook_?")

Jackson was originally a loan from their Eastern allies (where magical creatures in Company positions is generally less frowned upon), and officially moved in after his old contract ended last month. (“We’re keeping him,” had been Mark's ultimatum, and that had been the beginning and end of that conversation. Yugyeom hopes the poor soul who had been the other half of the exchange enjoys the East as much as Jackson has taken to the Northern islands.)

Mark and Jackson get along fabulously because they both descend from lines of highly misunderstood magical creatures (and they can’t feed off of each other, which helps).

Youngjae is the newest member to their party. When they had desperately needed another healer (this was the point in their training when Jinyoung had threatened to leave them bleeding out on the cold floor - or the undead equivalent - if they kept being so reckless), Youngjae got shoved into their Grand Order to make a nice odd number of seven.

Youngjae wastes no time in making his presence - well, rather, lack of presence - known. Youngjae is a spellcaster Empath, which means that in addition to being able to spot and manipulate emotions within a fifty-yard radius, he can usually blend in so well with the enemy's magical signatures that he's virtually invulnerable (or heals alarmingly quickly) to magic attacks. It comes in handy, when Bambam magics puffs of noxious metal at Youngjae just to see if his magic fields really can't find a target. Youngjae retaliates by trying to make Bambam feel intensely inappropriate emotions for nearest inanimate object, which sometimes ends in messy annihilation, but Youngjae is still working on that bit. Emotion synthesis is much harder than transfer.

Usually, Empaths hardly have the presence of mind to untangle other people's emotions from their own, much less spellcast, but Youngjae has miraculously kept it all in check. (“Thanks for being abnormal,” Yugyeom will say if he's in a particularly fond mood.) He’s the only Spellcaster Empath in the entirely of the Orders.

Ah, the Grand Orders. The secret, not-so-secret place for Society to keep an eye on people with too much magic for their own good.

The Seventh Order is a bit too eclectic even for the Company's tastes, so they’re mostly kept under wraps until they’re needed to deal with something particularly nasty they don’t want to risk one of their top teams for. Yugyeom doesn't mind - it sure beats being part of someone's weaponry collection as they seek the tools for World Domination™, Dark Magic Edition, as most of them have been subjected to at some point in their lives.

Yugyeom's unsure what the Company's algorithm for putting together a compatible Order is, but they make it happen. Yugyeom works the concealment enchantments; Jaebeom draws the brunt of the leftover monsters who bystep the niceties of magical camouflage; and Jackson, Mark, and Bambam cut those fools down. Youngjae and Jinyoung are responsible for staying in the back ('crowd control', as they say), patching up the team members when necessary.

The mission: Go in, kill as many monsters as possible, recover illegal instrument of magic, and get out - preferably in no more (or less) than seven pieces.

Their latest assignment has them out in the barren Western deserts (where absolutely _nothing_ sentient lives), a five-hour journey from barracks even with a Surefast charm. No one’s particularly thrilled about the the length of travel, or the location (“No chance of any food hawkers out there, is there?” hedges Youngjae).

The seven of them load into their transport pod four breath-taking seconds before their launch slot.

“Coordinates?” Jaebeom asks.

Mark rattles the numbers off without referencing the assignment log, causing Jaebeom to shoot him a glance.

“He would know,” scoffs Bambam, who is closest to the keypad, and because he's punching in the numbers, misses the exchange.

“Yeah I would know,” Mark says suddenly, sharply, and Bambam makes the wise choice to drop it.

The Seventh Order is still young in their dynamic, but Bambam in particular has had a history of issues with authority. His reputation of being a hotshot rule-bender followed him all the way to the Company, and he still doesn't enjoy people telling him what to do.

He’s been doing better, though. Jaebeom went out of commission a few months ago for a back injury, and even Bambam mumbles that he missed him when he returns. It sucks not having your usual tank and first-in-command (especially when Jackson’s still trying to work on his subtlety in pulling aggro) and it sucks even harder when your next-in-command mopes around in corners when he thinks no one’s watching.

“Hold tight,” Jaebeom warns, “Jae says this is the last pod they could spare - I’m not convinced it has safety features.”

Indeed, the unreliable seatbelt function never does engage the whole, bumpy, five-hour ride.


	2. Chapter 2

“You know, I’m not really getting evil scientist vibes from this place,” Jackson admits.

“How was this ever a lab? So unhygienic,” Bambam wrinkles his nose at the visible blankets of dust enveloping the place. With its high-backed carved chairs and faded silk tapestries, the manor did in fact look more the abandoned abode of some nobleman than a rogue scientist’s lair.

“The Order isn't listing pest control a priority, since they've mostly kept out of the cities,” Jaebeom reminds them. Sure, dark magic is only problematic when expensive shoes step in monster droppings. “But they're starting to feed on locals in the next village over, so take out what you can.”

“Don’t you think an extermination would have fixed this?” is Jinyoung’s pensive query. "They haven't tried one before?"

Jaebeom sighs. “The assignment file doesn’t say. Logically, I’d guess it’s because they failed to disengage the protective enchantments without an advanced Spellcaster.”

They all know, though, that logic isn’t always the Grand Company’s strong point. It takes Jinyoung two basic spells to blast clean through - two spells even Jackson knew the incantations for.

In the vaulted main atrium, remains of an extravagant banquet line a black marble table, tablecloths yellowing with age and covered in a heavy layer of dust. Cobwebs hang from a crystal chandelier.

“Creepy,” Bambam extends wriggly fingers to his nearest teammate, and Youngjae turns pale but doesn't make a comment.

A bat dislodges himself and screeches out of the arched doorway.

“I would point out the cliche there, but that doesn't seem appropriate now,” Jackson thinks aloud.

Yugyeom, meanwhile casts around for a suitable hiding place. Having the mix of magical blood and Spellcasters that their team does, their combination of magic signatures is usually enough to send the closest square mile of monsters down to the party. Yugyeom’s mesmer is generally strong enough to trance a thousand-yard radius of monsters into ignoring them unless attacked – the only weakness in his magic is that he needs to be asleep for it to work. He finds a suitably-sized chest (or is it a coffin?), climbs into it, and closes the lid.

As Yugyeom cultivates an inner state conducive to a long nap, their intel link crackles on.

“Yo, what's poppin’!” Jae’s voice and a whole lot of static blasts their ears. The Sixth Order is strictly technical: intelligence, weapons-testing and the like. (Jinyoung dreams of retirement there, one day.)

“What are we looking at today, Jae?”

They hear the tap of Jae’s fingers as he pulls up their location and heatmap details. “Target’s on the fourth floor, the largest room to the east. Some kind of wizard’s headpiece. The pests look pretty standard – doxys, wind drakes, ghouls, demons – some bundimons, gross, don’t step on those – maybe some harpies – oh, Mark you're in luck –”

“Total?”

“I’d say two or three dozen. Speaking of dozen – those donuts you hooked us up with, last week? They were bomb, Bam –”

“Jae.”

“- Yeah?”

“That's enough for now.”

When none of their specialties overlap very much, choosing who makes the first hit makes a world of difference. Generally, though, giving Jaebeom first stab was a good bet, and letting Youngjae mess with magical emotion was a risky last resort.

The first wave of monsters is ridiculously easy to wipe out; Youngjae maybe casts one healing spell total.

“Steer clear of those fluids,” Jinyoung cautions, sidestepping a pile of monster remains, “We don’t know what they’ll do to you.”

“It's not like we can get any weirder,” mutters Mark, usually a man of few words, but is uncharacteristically quiet today, even for him.

“There's a triplet of demon handmaidens due to barrel down that corridor in ten seconds,” reminds Jae over the link.

Two waves of monsters later, and they make it to the fourth floor, pry the ivory coronet the Company wants them to recover off a headboard, and tell Jae to go take his coffee break.

“Jinyoung’s right,” Jackson reflects, as they descend back down the ornate spiral staircases to their return pod. “You know, they could have sent one of those sentry divisions over with a Spellcaster Intermediate. I mean, it’s not like were super hot stuff but you don't need _that_ much magic training for this, right? There are other jobs we could be doing.”

Never stick around too long after your mission finishes, was Jaebeom’s policy, because it turns out, Jackson speaks too soon.

An army of grotesque, and decidedly _illegal_ hybrid forms - dragon, sprite, banshee, vampire mixes, you name it – burst through a side corridor, and zero their swirling eyes on Bambam, who had the misfortune of opening that door.

Poisoned projectiles launch, slimeballs fly, and they all try not to get splattered by the dark magic-infused innards of the slain.

“Call me crazy, but this –” Jackson pants, “- is way more than two or three dozen.”

“Youngjae, what the hell?” says Jaebeom, who had been having a minor aggro struggle, and now has various monsters looking at him with googly eyes.

“There was nothing else to transfer! They were all ganging up on Bam -” If anyone in that moment had the presence of mind to glance at their second-in-command, they would have seen color rise to Jinyoung's cheeks.

Yugyeom’s mesmer usually ensures that they don’t have more than ten or so monsters assaulting them at a time, but - things don't always go to plan. It’s nothing they can't handle. Jackson’s energy feeding ways usually works to their advantage, as does Bam’s metal manipulations (lots of minerals in blood, you know), and those vicious offensives Jinyoung always manages to fling out between his healcasting.

But these monsters, if Jaebeom’s eyes aren’t deceiving him, only seem to multiply, their gaping eyes brighter, each time someone works magic.

“O-okay,” Jaebeom wheezes, coming to a hypothesis, “All of you but Mark fall back.”

“What about me?” Bambam protests, not willing to miss on action.

“Not you – get someone to take care of that arm.” He had sustained a rather deep gash across his shoulder blade and bicep in his initial surprise.

So, the remaining members of the Seventh Order are left to retreat to a large closet they’re sure is empty. All they can do is huddle close and pray that their two eldest war class fighters will be able to overcome -

“No magic - you know that, right Mark?”

“I _know_ ,” he grits out, “ _Get out_. Of the way.”

...They'll be fine.

Bambam holds back a grimace as Jinyoung disinfects the wound and Youngjae makes him down several unpalatable potions.

“We’re having Division Nine check that out when we get back,” Jinyoung's mouth presses flat. “That’s _not_ a normal color.”

Bambam can’t twist his head around to check without inducing a burning pain to shoot up his arm, so he doesn’t. He almost doesn’t _want_ to know what it looks like, when Jinyoung sounds like that.

Jae crackles back onto their link. “Hey – I’m getting really freaking weird reads from your location - everything good?”

“ _Bad_ time, Jae.” Jackson growls.

“Okay, okay. Only - you might want to check out the basement. Just saying.”

As if on cue, a loose floorboard cracks open and reveals a hidden dropladder down.

Minutes later, Jaebeom and Mark barge into their hiding closet, backs heaving against the closed door, looking much sweatier but not worse for wear. "Okay," Jaebeom gasps, "I think that bought us thirty seconds, which should be enough time to - Oh." He looks between Jinyoung, Bambam's newly bandaged arm, and the recent turn of events.

“Well kids,” Jaebeom frowns at the dropladder, “Time for an adventure.”

Never has Youngjae wanted less to go exploring.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a dream once where got7 were superheroes fending off the bad guys, and then Youngjae showed up being his bright sunshine self and after a bit everyone stopped fighting. that was his whole superpower - making people feel so light and happy their fighting spirit dissipated ;_; (thank you for reading this Highly Necessary footnote)


	3. Chapter 3

At least the evil scientist-dude had the foresight to ward his lab spaces. It's blissfully quiet in this underground dungeon.

“You know, the magic on those hybrids were different. Almost like –” Jinyoung doesn't finish his train of thought, and Jackson doesn't need him to. _Something_ is making all their magic essences clump together.

“A Dispel charm isn’t going to fix this,” Bambam informs them. “There’s not enough sulfur in the air.”

“How about fire?” offers Mark, who looked ready to flame the place hours ago.

Jaebeom glances through the notes still pinned on the nasty walls. It looks like one of former owner's experiments went wrong, and had been festering here ever since. He’d been tinkering with magical possession, transplantation, _holy_ \- interbreeding?

Youngjae cuts to the chase. “Dark magic is spawning from this place, and I think we've just somehow made it worse.”

“It’s because there’s so much freaking heavy metal down here,” Jackson picks up a silvery vial between his fingertips. “What’d he do, drink the stuff? That’s embarrassing, man. Everyone knows that elixir of phoenix phlegm is the way to go.”

Jaebeom looks up from his diagrams. “Phoenix...what?”

“Well, when you’ll do anything for immortality,” Mark comments with morbid satisfaction. He doesn’t finish the sentence.

“I can't move these,” Bambam complains, pulling on materia gemstones the Company now wants them to recover, after they had briefed them on their most recent findings. A pattern of the colorful stones make up a strange mural covering two sides of the room. “The metal's _sticky_. It's like - this whole room is glue or something.”

“Wait –” Youngjae inhales sharply. “There's something back there.”

“Can you tell what it is?”

“It feels like - a dent - or, a really deep hole -”

“That's what she said,” mutters Jackson.

Youngjae faints.

“Youngjae!” Mark barely catches him around the shoulders before he collapses to the floor.

“It’s not collecting, it’s a vortex,” shouts Bambam over the chaos, suddenly understanding why the fabric in the room keeps swaying despite being twenty yards below anywhere breeze could blow.

“A _neverending_ hole,” supplies Jackson, who doesn’t get kicked out of the room because he keeps a straight face.

Jaebeom and Jinyoung look at each other seem to come to the same solution at once. “We need Yugyeom,” Jinyoung announces vaguely, Jaebeom already helping him dig out one of the rattiest looking spell books Bambam has ever seen.

Wait. Yugyeom? _Yugyeom_? “Do we even know how many other creepies are crawling around this place?” Bambam protests, “Once our cover’s gone they’ll all be swarming down here! And I don't trust those old-ass ward spells to hold -”

“They’re probably already swarming anyway, because of all the magic we let loose.” Mark astutely points out.

“Find a way, Bambam,” commands Jaebeom, as if that ended the conversation. Damn. Jaebeom could be real bossy when he wanted to be.

Bambam has to take several detours to avoid getting killed, dropping a few of the live wires and flashy explosives Jungkook had semi-legally smuggled him from Hit Enterprises (weaponry were their specialty). Bambam had been saving them. Curse Jaebeom and his eagle eyes. Bambam mournfully daydreams of all the other more fantastical ways he could have deployed them.

After trudging his way back up the main atrium, Bambam pries open the coffin full of once-extravagant linens and cutlery, and sighs. Which one would he be, if he were Yugyeom?

He tickles a silver spoon and hopes their hyungs aren't counting on their disguises down there.

“Bambam? What?” Yugyeom, his eyelids still drowsy, regards him with growing confusion.

“I’ll explain later. Right now, we have to book it down to –”

“Hey, Bam?...Is that yours?”

“What?”

“That shiny cloak thing behind you.”

Bambam turns. Thankfully, he has a few more things saved from their last 97-line meetup.

* * *

Jackson, who makes himself useful by scouting out the rest of the laboratory, stops at what resembles a medieval torture device carved in ebony. His eyes dart between the contraption and the gem-encrusted walls, and a sickening sense of familiarity washes over him.

“What was this, his creepy S&M chamber?” Jackson quips feebly. “If Grand Company wants these for decoration, Bam could probably do much better.”

“They don’t.” Jinyoung answers tersely, and one look at his face betrays what Jackson already suspects: magic draining. One of the most unpardonable crimes a person can commit. Jackson’s heard of it: bleeding the life force out of living magical creatures to convert it into materia. The magic is dark, primitive, and nearly impossible to accomplish. It did have the potential to give you great power, but it was a highly unwieldy kind of magic. And so _many_?

Youngjae is awake now, and barely lucid. “Everything hurts,” he moans.

“You know, we haven’t caught sight of the mad scientist yet, he's probably long gone,” Jackson observes.

“We found him,” Bambam announces, Yugyeom in tow. He sounds queasy. “I think part of him might be on my sleeve.”

“Yugyeom, over here.” Jaebeom waves. Jinyoung hands him a vial: a single dose of dreamless sleep potion.

Yugyeom visibly recoils. He did _not_ have a fun track record with dreamless sleep.

“You _have_ to wake me up in twenty four hours, okay? Last time -” He tries not to let the anxiety creep into his voice. Well - last time someone hadn't, it had landed Yugyeom in the Company.

“Bam?” he searches the face of his roommate.

Bambam scoffs. “No way I'm letting you off easy from dish duty this week,” but his steadying gaze allays much of Yugyeom's unease.

“Youngjae,” Jaebeom props him up, “I need you awake for this, so think of nothing absolutely nothing – and Jackson, take everything, slowly.”

“You know, evil materia is not part of my diet plan,” he laughs nervously.

“This isn’t the time to feel squeamish –”

Jackson darts a glance at Mark's face they all suddenly understand.

“It’s fine, Jackson," Mark says quietly.

“But hyung, there’s nothing to stick it to –”

“It’s not going to stick to anything.” Jaebeom replies firmly, "Dark magic collapses into itself when it reaches its limits - we need to reverse the power flow. Jinyoung's already Containment charmed the dungeon.”

Bambam watches with wide eyes. While Yugyeom and Youngjae focus on emptying space, Jackson consumes into it. Nothing happens at first. But then, the room seems to flatten and invert; the pressure drops until they can hardly inhale, a hollow tone pitches in their ears - like the sound of singing glasses, but tenfold more head-splitting - all the molecules in the room vibrate, and the piercing ring rises, rises, rises, until –

Silence.

They let out a collective sigh of relief as the air settles, inmaterial particles of magic dispersing in the air.

Bambam begins to quietly pry the empty materia crystals out of the wall.

“Wow.” Jackson marvels, several minutes later. “Can we use that trick to clean the house next time?”


	4. Chapter 4

They're all unusually quiet on what would usually be a celebratory ride back to headquarters.

Mark's fingers are faintly smoking (they had needed the extra elbow grease to clear their way back to the return pod) and the fact that he’s still setting off the smoke alarms in the vehicle probably has to do with some of the tension in the air.

Bambam, who’s the only one brave enough to get closer, gingerly puts his uninjured arm around Mark's shoulders.

“Mark,” entreats Jinyoung quietly.

“Hyung, we love you,” Jackson declares.

Jinyoung feels a light blanket of contentment cover him, of satisfaction and warmth; he's well-fed and a little sleepy, vaguely wonders if the large cat man would object if he took a nap on his lap, it looks soft –

“Youngjae, please.”

“Sorry,” he squeaks, “I was only trying to help.”

“Using _what?_ ” Jaebeom narrows his eyes, suddenly suspicious.

Mark silently procures a ghostly, wriggling mass out of his coat. It’s a small white dog – translucent, but oddly solid and warm feeling.

“Can we keep it?” bounces an excited Youngjae, who has probably known and decided keep quiet until they were too far out to return it.

“That would be highly irregular -” Jaebeom starts, while Jinyoung reasons, “Youngjae - you don't know how it's been tampered with -”

“He _feels_ like a regular puppy.”

“That's a big responsibility, Youngjae,” Jinyoung tries again.

“Well it's dead, I'm sure there isn't that much you need to do,” Bambam says under his breath.

“We’re having headquarters test it once we get back,” Jaebeom declares, but it falls on deaf ears.

“What will we name her?”

Coco, the newly christened pup, happily eats through the protective runes on Youngjae’s coat. Little by little, the strain in Mark's shoulders ease, and he seems to leave some of it permanently behind in the winding hills and brush.

* * *

Yugyeom wakes up in soft, safe-feeling space, to find Jinyoung sitting on the edge of his bed.

“Did we kill it?” Yugyeom mumbles, trying to sit up.

“Marvelously.”

“Next mission?”

“In ten days.”

“Good.” He flops back down on his pillow. A stray thought occurs to Yugyeom. “How many promotion points?”

Jaebeom frowns from the control board beside him. “Not much materia recovered. But between the fancy spellcasting, and medium-damage evac - somewhere around two hundred each?”

Yugyeom groans. Only a hundred thousand more until their next upgrade.

“But hey,” Jinyoung says with a sardonic smile, “New uniforms. Bambam’s already trying to trick the AI into taking them back.”

Yugyeom opens one eye, under which Jinyoung has slid a screen with the mockup on it. They look nicer - more flexible material, weatherproof, better webbing.

“What’s wrong with them, did they send the wrongs sizes again?”

“No, they're adaptive fit - new technology.” He tosses one at Yugyeom. “See for yourself.” The mirth in his eyes doesn’t bode well.

Yugyeom closes his eyes again. They’re neon green.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> short last few chapters D; hold tight, I may add a little drabble chapter at the end


	5. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> just some silliness

“Dragon droppings,” Bambam hisses, clutching his foot in pain where he's stubbed his toe.

“Bam, I _told_ you to watch where you're going –”

“No, _dragon droppings_.”

Jaebeom's gaze drops to the floor, finding the acrid-smelling mess at Bambam's right boot. Yes, indeed - that is dragon excrement, of sizable proportions, and undeniably _fresh_.

Hearts in their throats, the team of seven inch their way to the next room, deeper into the maze of caves that is their current mission. Dragons are too often large to mesmer, don't have the emotional stability to be swayed by Empath casting, impossible to effectively combat or war-magic away - and generally bad news in confined spaces like these.

They hear a scaly rustling echo from one of the smaller chambers, and they advance with trepidation: weapons drawn, shielding spells bolstered, every fire-quenching spell they know fast on their lips -

“Oh,” Mark exclaims in surprise. “She's kind of sweet, isn’t she?”

They find a tiny water dragon, curled up in a nest of gold and silver trinkets, wings still filmy bits of skin, chewing on her own tail.

“Protocol, Mark.” Jaebeom warns him, when he catches the telltale sign of those eyes softening. Curse Mark and his weakness for small animals.

“Yeah, protocol is carting her off to Order Two, where they'll probably just skin her for her hide.”

Even Jinyoung has to admit, the days of Seventh Order mission logs written up to protocol perfection were times of the past.

They don’t let Mark _keep_ the dragon (Coco and the five-odd cats they've picked up along the way are already enough trouble), but they settle on the next best compromise: they set her free.

Jaebeom feels compelled to remind them for the umpteenth time. “None of you saw any -" he gestures widely, "- Of this. Okay? None of you saw any dragons.”


End file.
